RATING
8
PRODUCT REVIEW
Yu Televentures, Micromax’s online-only brand, got off
to a tumultuous start,
thanks to the flip-flop of Cyanogen with regards to letting other phone makers
use its Cyanogen OS. It appeared as though Micromax was trying to create a monopoly on
Cyanogen-branded phones. Ultimately, however, the company cleared the air
with OnePlus and, as of now, Micromax will be the sole brand selling Cyanogen
OS-based phones in India.
Micromax has been out of spotlight for a while now,
thanks to the onslaught of Motorola’s affordable ‘stock’ Android
devices and Chinese phone makers such as Xiaomi, Oppo, and
more recently, OnePlus. Micromax’s
strategy of selling re-branded Chinese handsets for dirt-cheap seemed to
flounder and it had to devise a new game-plan in order to retain its position
as one of the top mobile vendors in the country.
Micromax’s answer is a complete new brand of devices
running customisable ROMs and will only retail online. Although Xolo
was the first Indian company to bring custom ROMs for Android with the
launch of Hive UI, Micromax’s
foray into the custom ROM space may push other Indian players to enter this
arena as well. This concept is relatively new in India and Micromax hopes to be
at the forefront with the Cyanogen-powered Yu Yureka.
We put the Yu Yureka’s capabilities to to test to find
out if Micromax’s latest strategy has what it takes to change the dynamics of
the budget-smartphone market.
Build and Design: 7/10
Micromax phones are not exactly popular for their
build quality. The YU Yureka tries to be a bit different from the regular
Micromax phone you may have seen. The 5.5-inch IPS panel display with Corning
Gorilla Glass 3, is complemented by what appears to be Micromax’s attempt at
aping OnePlus One’s sandstone finish rear cover. Sadly, it’s a poor attempt at
that. Though it’s a lot better than a standard glossy plastic back, it lacks
the finesse of the Sandstone cover on the OnePlus. The removable rear cover
tends to protrude out slightly along all the sides. This may seem annoying and
will take some getting used to, if you are used to phones with smooth edges. On
removing the cover, you see slots for the SIM cards and microSD card along with
the removable battery.
Volume rocker button is located on the left side and
the power/standby button on the right. The textured finish on these buttons is
appreciated. The 3.5mm audio-jack is located on top and the microUSB charging
and data transfer port is located on the base. Nowhere on the phone will you
notice any Micromax branding, instead, you only see the YU brand name in a
light blue colour on the back.
The Corning Gorilla Glass 3 display ensures that the
screen is scratch-resistant, but one cannot help but notice finger print
smudges. I had to wipe the screen several times to get rid of the smudges from
time to time. The first thing that will strike you when you hold the phone in
your hand is how lightweight it is. Despite being a large 5.5-incher, the Yu
Yureka is slender and lightweight. The rounded edges and the sandstone-wannabe
rear cover does give a good grip, too.
Features: 8/10
Being the first phone from the Yu brand, the Yureka
comes with impressive specs. It’s powered by the 64-bit Qualcomm Snapdragon 615
system on chip which houses an octa-core processor clocked at 1.5GHz and the
Adreno 405 GPU clocked at 550MHz. It comes paired with 2GB of DDR3 RAM and
offers 16GB of storage of which 12.8GB is available to the user. You can expand
the storage via the microSD card slot by 32GB. Yureka is a dual SIM phone and
it supports Cat4 4G LTE with TDD 2300MHz and FDD 1800MHz bands supported for
India
On the camera front, it comes with a 13MP rear camera
and a 5MP front-facing camera. It runs on Android 4.4.4 KitKat OS with the
Cyanogen 11 ROM. We will talk more about the ROM next, but to put it simply,
Cyanogen OS allows you to customise the phone to your liking. The Yureka
bundle is simple with a power adapter, data cable, battery and earphones.
Software: 8.5/10
The USP of the Yu Yureka is the CyanogenMod 11 ROM on
the Android 4.4 platform. Thanks to this, the phone offers you multiple ways to
customise your phone. Micromax has included some of its special apps on the
phone such as AudioFX which lets you customise the audio output, ScreenCast
lets you record your on screen navigations with the recording registering where
you’ve touched the screen as well and so on. YUniverse is Yureka’s own browser
which is basically a customised version of the Opera browser. In terms of the
user experience, there wasn’t much different from the CM11 OS on the OnePlus One, apart
from more themes.
Yureka has a dedicated app called Themes, which lets
you select themes based on your preferences. Unlike downloading themes on a
regular Android device, the Themes app on Yu Yureka allows you to download
individual aspects from multiple themes. This means you can select a particular
wallpaper from X theme, font from Y theme and so on – thereby creating your own
unique theme. Under the Components section, you get access to customise the
icons, status bar, controls, fonts, boot animations and so on.
This is
how the lock screen looks
The Settings menu lets you tweak the device further.
You can wake up the phone with a double-tap or make the phone go to sleep by
double-tapping the status bar, change screen-off animation style, customise
soft buttons to perform certain functions, add widgets on lock screen and so
on. You can also adjust the notifications drawer and add your own icons to
quick settings menu. In short, the CyanogenMod 11 OS gives you ample
opportunity to tweak your device the way you like.
Performance: 8/10
The Micromax Yu Yureka sports a Qualcomm Snapdragon
615 octa-core chipset, which keeps most tasks running at a lightning speed.
Now, the immediate competitors to the Yu Yureka are the Redmi Note 3G/4G
and the ASUS Zenfone 5. In the AnTuTu benchmark it scores better than both
these phones. In Geekbench 3, the Yureka scored 654 as opposed to 441 on the
Redmi Note 3G and 435 on the Redmi Note 4G. The test results are shown below.
The
phone runs at a lightning speed
The touch response of the Yureka is smooth and we did
not notice any lag while using the phone. Call quality was quite good and we
did not experience any call drops at the time of testing. One thing that did
annoy us at times, was the phone unlocking on its own when placed in the
jeans’ pocket. You will need some security code to prevent it from unlocking
accidentally.
Yureka can handle popular games such as RipTide GP2,
Fruit Ninja, Shadowgun smoothly. In the movie mode, the default video player
can play back most formats, though we noticed some stuttering when
playing full HD, high bit-rate videos.
The bundled earphones are of the in-ear type and I
found them to be surprisingly good while listening to range of music from
classical to rock. Quality suffers when playing low frequencies, but there
wasn’t any noticeable distortion at higher volume levels. I felt that the
construction of the earphones could have been better, as there is barely any
sturdy stem between the eartips and the wire. If you yank out the earphones
using the wire too often, it can affect the performance over time.
Display: 7.5/10
Micromax Yu Yureka sports a 5.5-inch HD display and
thanks to the IPS panel, it offers great viewing angles. The display is tad
reflective, though there wasn’t any noticeable colour tinge on the warm or cool
side. Due to the HD resolution spread out over 5.5-inches, you get a pixel
density of 267ppi, which will not give you the sharpest output when reading
smaller font sizes. There are some apps such as WhatsApp, where I noticed a
slight amount of smudging of the text. Sunlight legibility is decent, so long
as you have the brightness levels over 70 percent.
The black levels aren’t that great, although there
wasn’t any noticeable backlight bleeding. The reflective surface bundled with
smudges makes viewing videos having dark scenes a bit of an issue. Just ensure
you have cleaned the screen and do not have any light sources behind you when
watching videos.
Camera: 7/10
Yureka comes with a 13MP rear camera and a 5MP front
camera. The daylight shots are good and packed with good detail. We liked the
fact that the camera manages to keep chromatic aberrations under control. The
various shooting filters are accessible by just swiping across the camera
screen. The AF is a bit on the slower side, but that isn’t much of a concern.
HDR mode does tend to wash out the image sightly. Noise is visible only on
pixel peeping, though the quality is quite good for online sharing. Shooting in
low light is mediocre. The image lacks detail and chroma noise is quite
prominent. It supports full HD video shooting and the output is decent, as long
as you are not panning the phone while shooting. The microphone does a great
job at picking up audio details.
The
13MP camera captures ample detail in daylight. Also notice around the edges,
the chromatic aberrations are well controlled
The
Yureka captures colours well and as can be seen in this image. The AF speed is
decent enough to capture street shots
The HDR
mode balances the overall lighting, although the details from the blown out
portions isn’t retained much
Indoor
shots in well lit rooms captures lot of details
The
camera was able to capture the texture of the wall along with the colours of
the parrot mural quite well.
Shooting
at night with ambient lights captures a lot of noise which is easily noticeable
Battery life: 7.5/10
The Yu Yureka houses a 2500mAh battery, which is not
much considering the power-consuming 5.5-inch HD display. The phone comes with
a 1A charger and there is no rapid-charging mode, so expect charging times
to be on the higher side. We did not notice any dedicated power
saving feature, apart from the Power-saving performance profile. This isn’t as
detailed as the ultra power saving modes we have seen on phones such as the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 or Sony Xperia Z3. That
said, you always have the option to download a third-party battery saver
app.
While using it for the first couple of days, the
battery discharge rate was quite alarming, which required charging at least
once in a work day. But over a week’s time the battery performance improved and
it could easily last for around 10-12 hours of regular use, which included
calling, messaging, internet surfing, audio playback, video playback and so on.
Verdict and Price in India
Micromax’s online venture, Yu, is off to a great start
with the Yureka, thanks to the attractive selling price. At Rs 8,999, the
Yureka goes head-to-head with the Xiaomi Redmi Note 4G (which is still Rs 1,000
higher) and Asus Zenfone 5, and maybe even the Lenovo A6000, which is expected
to launch soon. As it has the CyanogenMod 11 OS, the Yureka offers countless
possibilities of tweaking the device. Despite the similar OS, it would not be
fair to compare it with the OnePlus One, as the OnePlus One is priced at Rs
21,999 and has higher-end specs.
The Yureka is not without its share of drawbacks.
The chief among them being a not-so-sharp display along with poor
low-light photography. The build quality is strictly OK. But these are
compromises one might be willing to make if one wants an affordable
phablet, which stands out from the pool of the cheap Android phablets in the
market.
Micromax has not used any of its branding, so it
should be interesting to see how the Yu brand pans out. Micromax has promised
more variety in future devices under the Yu brand. It will take the online-only
route for selling Yureka and all future Yu products. With an attractive price
of Rs 8,999, Yu surely will attract a lot of young buyers. The promise of
monthly software updates is also going to be an added incentive for buying this
phone.
Should other players be on guard? Only time will tell.
But with Lenovo also planning to release their low-cost 4G phone, the A6000
soon in Indian market, 2015 certainly seems to have kicked off on a positive
note as far as smartphones go. This trend which started last year, is sure to
go on this year as well.
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